“Silver makes everything look contemporary… If you paint something silver, it looks, I don’t know, from today.” Rudolf Stingel
Rudolf Stingel's large-scale painting envelops the viewer in a luminous, reflective field of silver, its surface alive with subtle variations in texture and tone. The work embodies Stingel's ongoing investigation into the nature of painting itself, using the metallic hue to simultaneously reference the present moment and destabilize any fixed sense of time. The title, drawn from the artist's own words, functions as both a conceptual provocation and an honest admission, foregrounding the seductive yet slippery power of silver to render everything it touches urgently, almost uncomfortably, now.
- Medium
- acrylic and oil on canvas
- Spotted At
- Auction House · Phillips
🔨 Auction Lot
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
May 8, 2016
More by Rudolf Stingel
styrofoam, 4 panels
“Zen is about acceptance, right?” Mr. Stingel said. “So that’s the way it is. I do sit and look at him sometimes — we have a meaningful relationship. You can’t get over it. You just live with it.” - Rudolph Stingel
The radicalness of Stingel’s Cellotex panels is often underestimated. While rejecting any suggestion of being a social, political or conceptual gesture, these works may be some of the most open and brave moments in recent contemporary art production. As with his provocative instruction book on how to make his paintings, Stingel once again gives himself and his work, in their totality, to the public and the viewer. He invites the viewer inside the surface of his work, and allows anyone to make a 'contribution' to it. The critical voice of the viewer becomes part of the work. Like magnetic tape, the artist records the viewer’s reaction to his work – not simply verbally, but physically.
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